


The Messenger

by Lenny9987



Series: Lenny's Imagine Claire and Jamie Prompts [8]
Category: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Not as angsty as it sounds, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-03 22:06:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6628492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenny9987/pseuds/Lenny9987
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Imagine Brianna gets shot some time when they're at their place in America and Claire has to save her</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Messenger

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt sounds incredibly angsty but if you read through to the end, you may be surprised...

Claire was in her garden pulling up weeds, enjoying the silence and solitude. Brianna and Roger had gone to visit Fergus and Marsali for a few weeks, intending to take care of several errands while there—and they’d taken _all_ the children with them. Germain was eager to see his parents again and Claire thought it was good for Fanny to get some time away from the Ridge and see more children her own age—she’d spent too little of her childhood playing with other children and though having Mandy as a playmate helped, Joanie and Félicité were much closer to her own age.

Weeding her herb garden was a task Claire constantly meant to do but hadn’t yet gotten around to accomplishing. Fanny and Mandy had both taken an interest in helping Claire with little chores about her surgery so she had begun educating them both regarding the different herbs she grew but they still had a long way to go. There had been too many times when one or both of the girls had mistaken the weeds for the plants themselves and rather have them assist her in tidying the garden—which she feared would result in the far more upsetting prospect of her garden being plucked of herbs with the weeds left behind to flourish—Claire had chosen to take advantage of their absence to finally complete the task to her satisfaction. Jamie had even made up little markers for the different sections to help prevent future catastrophe.

The silence was abruptly broken by a high voice screeching, “Grannie! Grannie, come quick!”

Claire started from her kneeling position and got to her feet, dusting dirt and plant matter from her skirt and hands.

“Mandy?” she called.

The dark-haired girl had been running up the path toward the house as fast as her little legs could carry her but she stopped abruptly when she heard her grandmother’s voice. Claire hastened over all too aware of how stiff her knees and hips were from her time kneeling—one of the good things about having the girls around was that they prevented her from getting so bogged down in a task she forgot to move and stretch.

“Grannie!” Mandy exclaimed breathlessly as she collided with Claire’s legs. “Ye have to come right away. Mam got shots!”

It took a moment for Mandy’s words to sink in but as soon as they did, adrenaline burst through Claire’s system. She tore up the path to the house and into her new surgery. It was a long ways to carry her heavy medical box if she were to go on foot—and there was no way she was going to waste the time it took to saddle a horse when the distance could easily be covered on foot regularly. Luckily, she wouldn’t need everything from the medical box and once she had Brianna stabilized it would be easy to send Roger or one of the boys back to fetch it. She would need a scalpel and forceps for retrieval, sutures and a needle to close the wound, bandages and distilled alcohol to dress and disinfect it.

“Where, Mandy?” she pressed the child who had followed her into the house. “Where’s your mother shot?” Even the a general idea of where Brianna had been struck would help Claire to know what to expect, what materials could safely be left behind as unnecessary.

“At home,” Mandy answered with an uncertain look on her face.

Claire cursed under her breath—it wasn’t the information she was looking for but pressing Mandy further might waste valuable time and it wouldn’t help to frighten Mandy as Claire would lose more time trying to calm her down again.

Claire settled on a bottle of laudanum—ether would be better but it was far too dangerous to attempt to move it so far and in such haste. She slung the bag over her head and arm so that the strap cut across her chest leaving her hands free to hold her skirts out of the way.

Mandy was too slow to keep up with Claire as she flew down the path towards Roger and Brianna’s cabin. It was difficult to strike the right balance—on the one hand, trying to prepare herself for what she would find might enable her to reach that space of detachment she would need in order to do what was necessary medically to save Brianna; on the other hand, any attempt to picture what had happened to her daughter and how she might be injured caused a new wave of fear and panic to wash over her.

It obviously had to have happened while they were making their way back—and close to home if they managed to get her all the way to the cabin. Thieves on the road, perhaps or a raiding party waiting for preoccupied travelers—and with the children there, Claire had no trouble believing Brianna would willfully put herself in harm’s way to protect them. Jamie… someone would have to go fetch him—and Ian—from the fields—Germain would likely be quickest.

Finally the cabin was in sight. The lack of visible activity caused her chest to constrict with terror before plunging ahead, refusing to even consider the fact that she might be too late.

She burst through the door, her eyes going to the table in the middle of the room that offered the most promising workspace.

Brianna stood at the table unpacking crates of wares from the shops—most of them supplies they couldn’t get at the Beardsley trading post, items only available in a city. She turned at the commotion of Claire’s entrance and grinned.

“There you are, Mama. I was wondering… wait… where’s Mandy? Why do you have your bag with you?”

Claire crossed to Brianna and took hold of her upper arms, turning her from side to side in disbelief as she caught her breath from her hasty flight along the path.

“You’re… you’re not hurt? You haven’t been shot?” Claire panted.

“What? No. What’re you talking about?” Brianna helped Claire sink into a chair before moving to fetch her a drink. Claire set her medical bag on the floor beside her.

“Mandy,” Claire remarked looking towards the door. She could see a small speck running along the path. “She said I was to come quick and that you’d been shot.”

“Shot? What… why would she say such a thing?” Brianna moved out to the yard to meet her daughter and question her.

Claire swallowed the water Brianna had given her, the cup trembling in her hand as the sense of urgency faded and her system sought an outlet for the nervous energy that remained. Roger soon joined her in the yard with another crate of goods in his arms. He brought it into the house with a nod of greeting for Claire.

“The lads went off to find the Higgins boys to show their haul and Fanny followed after ‘em,” Roger explained to Claire when she asked why he seemed to be unloading everything himself. “I wager folk’ll be round soon after that to pick up the odds and ends they asked us to fetch them. But I hear Mandy had something to do with why _you_ came by so quick.”

The lass in question had reached her mother and a scolding, the voices of the two rising but not carrying far enough for Claire and Roger to make out how Mandy chose to defend herself. Then they heard Brianna’s rich laugh as she scooped her daughter from the ground and carried her to the house.

“Apologize for scaring your grannie,” Brianna gently encouraged Mandy as she set her down on the floor.

“I’m sorry if I scared ye, Grannie,” Mandy said mechanically. Her attention was on her mother, the girl seemed upset by her mother’s amusement over the whole situation.

“It’s all right, Mandy,” Claire assured her as she reached out to pull the girl to her for a quick hug. “I just don’t understand—”

Brianna set a small wooden case down on the table before Claire, the sharp rap of the wood on the tabletop interrupting her thought.

“Open it,” Brianna instructed.

The case was relatively new and the latch opened smoothly. Nestled securely inside was a pair of carefully wrought hypodermic syringes—Brianna had helped Claire draw up the designs so that when an opportunity to have them made arose, they would be ready.

“When I mentioned having them made, Marsali was able to point me in the right direction,” Brianna explained.

“I told ye Mam got shots for ye,” Mandy insisted.

Claire smiled at her granddaughter as she closed the lid to the case. “You are absolutely right, Mandy. And you remember these from going to the doctor, I bet.”

The curly head nodded. “When we stayed with Joe before looking for Da. He gave us lots of shots because Mam asked him to,” Mandy turned to look at Brianna who was trying very hard to contain her mirth—the girl didn’t like the idea of the grown-ups laughing at her when she wasn’t trying to be funny. “She said we’d need ‘em where we were going.”

“Well, thank you, Mandy for coming to tell me,” Claire thanked Mandy graciously. “You’ll have to help me find a safe place in the surgery to put these—somewhere Adso won’t be able to get at them.”

“I ken just the place, Grannie,” Mandy exclaimed as she jumped up. “Come and I’ll show ye.” She started to run to the door again but Roger caught her before she could make it out.

“I’m afraid I need to rest a bit more first,” Claire entreated. “Let your mother show me the rest of what you lot got while you were visiting with Uncle Fergus and Auntie Marsali, then we’ll head back up to the house and my surgery.”


End file.
